How to stack water in minecraft?

I'm trying to build a house from a design I found. It has a stack of stationery water which for the life of me I can't replicate without flooding my house. It shows the build later by layer, and the first block is a glowstone. All I've been doing is stacking ice on top but the first two were ok, but the third has gone wrong. Any ideas? I'm new to minecraft.

You should put blocks surrounding the structure to prevent the water from overflowing. If you mean that you don't know how to place the water block, you have to use a bucket(7 metal ingots in a U shape).

Could you link the design? It would make it easier to figure out what happened.